The GOP’s “civil war” is over, and the tea party has “swallowed the establishment” — according to Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Erika JohnsenPosted at 6:01 pm on May 20, 2014

The Democratic National Committee Chairwoman was vexed, you see, when MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell so baldly revealed Democrats’ super double-secret strategy to label every possible member of the rather large Republican family as a crazed, uncompromising, and basically inhuman “extremist,” and that the number of tea-party candidates that may lose their primaries tonight might make carrying out said strategy a tad more difficult. According to Wasserman Schultz, however, we’re all tea partiers now — and seeing as how that obviously means that we have all become so “extreme” that we’ve fallen clean off the rightward side of the political spectrum, you should probably just give in this fall and join the group of highly civilized über-centrists that is the modern Democratic party.

ANDREA MITCHELL: We’ve talked about Kentucky and Georiga where Michelle Nunn and Alison Lundergan Grimes are really good candidates for the fall, but you’ve also got some cases where, first of all, tea party candidates are not doing as well as some had predicted, and if they do lose, you’re going to have some mainstream candidates. So, you’re not going to have the benefit of sort of the wild-eyed Republicans that have helped you hang on to the Senate. And you’ve also got some cases where there are some strong Republican women in Michigan and Oregon and elsewhere, West Virginia, who are going to create some really good opportunities for Republicans to pick up women’s votes.

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, let me just sort of steer you in another direction on the frame that you laid out there on the tea party. The civil war that’s been raging in the Republican party is really over. The tea party has won it, and essentially they have swallowed the establishment. They’ve pulled all of the Republicans in any primary field so far to the right that they all embrace varying degrees of extremism, and that’s demonstrative in the agendas that many of these candidates have proposed or that they’ve actually supported as elected officials. So, the contrast with our Democratic candidates, whether they’re incumbents or challengers, is very clear. When it comes to Mitch McConnell today, you know, OK, so he’ll win his primary. That is not a victory for the establishment.